NoNieqa' Ramos’ stories are full of Puerto Rican teens whose lives are complex and not always filled with sunshine and rainbows. However, there’s always a raw type of honesty and a good dosage of hope in younger generations learning and fighting for their right to exist. I talked to NoNieqa about her novels, standing up for what you believe in, and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.
Macy in The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary (TDGD) wields a machete to protect her loved ones. For what (or whom) do you yield your personal, figurative (or literal) machete?
My personal figurative machete is wielded against those who commit sexual assault, but also against those who see the signs of abuse, who hear an outcry, and who do absolutely nothing but gaslight and shame victims. Macy wields a machete for Alma because our world still to this day, to this minute, loads the weight and onus onto survivors and not perpetrators.
My machete is wielded against people who weaponize sex and sexual identity against others for personal or political power.
Your most recent novel,The Truth Is (TTI), deals with a lot of questions of identity, especially gender identity, within Latinx, more specifically Puerto Rican, communities and what that means in the machista culture we live in. Why do you believe it’s important to be able to portray these conversations that are happening in real time within our communities and families in your book?
One of the gifts of our Latinx communities is the art of our conversations. A beautiful intersection of past and present threads seamlessly over our dinner tables. I would love for families to talk about how they are supporting their marginalized Black and LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters and siblings. To continue to collectively and consciously instill the values of equity and social justice into their kids and grandkids. I think we are an incredibly powerful people capable of casting out our biases and allowing room in those newly-hollowed spaces for a perennial blooming. The transmission of empathy-in-action within our families and our communities is white supremacy’s undoing. (Shout out to Cesar Chavez, whom I recently learned was the first civil rights activist to march for LGBTQIA+ rights.)
But I had another motive in writing TTI. I wanted to tear apart all the absurd stereotypical homophobic arguments in real time. No matter who says them, whether it be a peer or a family member, these arguments are wrong and cruel and should never again have credibility in our society. I wrote the conversations about gender identity hoping to dismantle all the false rhetoric that is hurting our kids.
If you were to write a historical fiction book about a Puerto Rican figure, who would it be and why?
I think I would start my book with the gravesites in Puerto Rico that underwent extensive damage because of Hurricane Maria and still haven’t been restored or maintained because of lack of resources. I would focus each chapter on honoring [islanders who] died beginning with the National Cemetery in Bayamón. I’d write about Elmy Luis Matta, who died in the Korean War and received the DSC for Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart. He was raised by a single mom in Mayagüez, and the oldest of six children, all of whom served in the military. Their mother was a renowned seamstress and ran a boarding house. His sister, Maria Muniz, became the first woman U.S. Marine from Puerto Rico.
You have free reins to collab with another Latinx creative and they’re free and on board as well, who are you picking and what are you making?
This is a tricky question. Maybe I’m exploring that now…
I seriously do want to make a book of prayers to Brown Jesus with Natasha Díaz. I mean if KRS-One can make The Gospel of Hip Hop —which I covet— I feel like we can.
But seriously? How about a new series of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories with the MG Musas... At the YA level with YA Musas. Yes, I’m cheating because how can I choose?
And: a Choose Your Own Adventure at the adult romance level because how dope would that be to turn the page and see what would happen if you did X with Y or X with ? (#copyrightsodon’tcopyme. #ZoeyCastile)
How does your identity affect your writing?
My identity as an educator profoundly affects my identity. I wrote Macy in The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary to rep the challenge we face as educators in serving emotionally disturbed kids and to honor the beauty that lies beyond the barbed wire of those kids. For Verdad, in The Truth Is, I’ll refer to one (of several) incidents I experienced with anti-Black bias. A Latinx child had been disciplined by a kind, considerate, gifted Black teacher. The child responded by calling the teacher the n-word. I watched (and yes, chimed in), as the Black educator patiently worked through this incident with the child, something she had experienced with other Latinx kids in our community. Rather than waiting for things to float to the surface, I saw TTI as an opportunity to pull the drain and expose the racism underneath. No matter what family biases were responsible for these kids and their racist comments, they are in fact kids. Adult minds may have calcified, but kids, I believe, we can educate, nurture, enlighten, and redeem.
Who do you write for?
One audience I write for are people who have struggled with mental illness. Too often, I have seen mental illness depicted as either the subject of horror stories or in the Ophelia category. By the latter I mean, the girls depicted are Virgin Suicides: beautiful, dreamy, seductive, mysterious; lustrous-haired and pink-cheeked.
[Those of us] who suffer from mental illness ruminate and cycle. We overeat and undereat, and maybe if we have long hair we are not washing it or pulling it out. Even when life is playing in major chords, we hear it in minor keys. We can feel unwanted, because we know how we frustrate people.
Verdad is frustrating. But she is a real face of what mental illness looks like.
What movie(s) would you pair your book with?
I don’t know, honestly. I imagine Macy from TDGD in a movie called Girl, Always Interrupting, though.
Shoutout a Latinx writer or creator whom you admire!
No. [I’ll talk about] two:
I’m shouting out the gifted Aida Salazar, writer of the award-winning novel-in-verse The Moon Within, a brilliant MG book about the intersection of Latinx and gender identity. She created our Latinx collective Las Musas and, because of her, I have connected with some of the most exceptional Latinx creators in my life, and I am so eternally grateful to be part of this sisterhood.
I’m also shouting out Lilliam Rivera who has interviewed Sonia Sotamayor, who wrote a stunning piece in the Washington Post about the protest movements in Puerto Rico, and who is at the forefront of Latinx lit in her amplification of Boricua and Bronx voices.
Anything else you can share about your upcoming projects?
Any minute now, I will have an announcement coming from Publisher’s Marketplace! As far as my next WIP, I am toying with spooky speculative fiction. [Editor’s note: NoNieqa’s next two books have been announced: Your Mama, out in spring 2021, and Beauty Woke, out in fall 2021; both are picture books and will be published by HMH/Versify.]
The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary and The Truth Is are available now! Follow NoNieqa on Twitter and Instagram to learn more about her upcoming works!
NoNieqa Ramos
Raised in the Boogie Down Bronx, NoNieqa Ramos is an educator, literary activist, and writer of picture books and young adult literature. She writes to amplify marginalized voices and to reclaim the lost history, mythology and poetry of the Latinx community. THE DISTURBED GIRL'S DICTIONARY was selected as the New York Public Library's Best Books 2018, YALSA's Best Books 2019, and earned an In the Margins Book Award. Her 2nd novel THE TRUTH IS comes out September 2019. Her picture book BEAUTY WOKE debuts fall 2021. YOUR MAMA releases spring 2021. She believes Halloween is a lifestyle, not a holiday. She lives with her soulmate and her two beauties in Virginia. Find out more about her at at lasmusas.com and nonieqaramos.com.